There was a girl I met the last week of Albania.
I met her in the street and my team and I kept seeing her so we got to build a relationship with her. I came to really love her.
Honestly though, she was physically ugly. Her hair was thinned out, her skin just didn’t look good. You could tell she probably was in a lot of discomfort. She even had ticks, too.
*spoiler alert* This was a stray dog we adopted and that adopted us.
She was a black puppy that was kinda ugly, but she still had that puppy look about her and she was SO cute to me. God blessed us dog lovers on the two teams with this and other puppies to love. And honestly, Shadow loved us so much too! She followed us around, tried and entered the church where we worked many times to come hang out with us, and when we were sitting she would come and sit by you and try and “hug” you. It did our heart so much good to have this puppy–it was a semblance of home.
Here are two lessons I learned because of this puppy, though.
–This puppy still had “joy” even though her skin probably did cause her discomfort. She was always smiling and so happy to see us.
–Beauty and love are in the eye of the beholder. We, in our sin, can be ugly to God but He still loves us and pursues us. We did the same for Shadow. She was just a stray, but we gave her water and we gave her food. In fact, we even allowed her to come stay in our home for a couple hours. She was spoiled and loved.
Also, never put ministry in a box. Sometimes ministry IS puppy ministry. My team leader Becca started this month off right for our teams by loving the stray dogs by buying dog food and petting them. In fact we actually had three dogs we loved on this month thanks to her love of dogs. We had Snickers (or Snicks), Aslan, and Shadow (the last two I named). Although Shadow was my favorite.
Here are some pictures of Shadow.
